MIT Media Lab Turns 25: A Gallery

MIT’s Media Lab celebrated its silver anniversary last week by opening its secretive lab doors to the press. It also invited tech luminaries, such as MIT Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte (now heading One Laptop Per Child) and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, to share their insight on innovation and technology breakthroughs. The Media Lab, which has pioneered everything from robotic prosthetics to the electronic ink inside the Kindle e-reader, showed off some of the latest technology that could soon shape modern life. The images and text that follow are all from IDG News Service which spent the day at the Media Lab exploring the future. (Photos by Nick Barber)

Hugh Herr, head of the lab's Biomechatronics group, spoke to a packed crowd at MIT. Herr, a double-amputee, created artificial limbs for himself that include motors and sensors to closely mimic human legs.

Nexi, left, is one of the robots from the Media Lab's Personal Robotics Group. The robot can track objects and interact with its surroundings.

Leonardo, also from the Personal Robotics Group, is capable of near-human facial expression, has a sense of touch and can learn and remember faces. Completed in 2001, it is an older project, but paved the way for more research.

At right, Vitor Pamplona, one of the researchers on the NETRA project, demonstrates the system to a Media Lab visitor. It uses a small piece of plastic placed over a smartpone screen to diagnose eyeglass prescriptions.

Researchers who developed the Mantis Machine offered visitors a 3D sculpture of their faces made of chocolate. The Mantis Machine is a low-cost machine that can carve 3D renderings out of various materials. The Mantis Machine has 13 major parts and costs under US$100 to build.

The Luminar lamp is an augmented reality, robotic interface that projects images onto a flat surface for users to interact with. The lamp's robotic arm will respond to gestures and its camera can recognize objects.